Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs

Security enhanced Emergency Situation Detection System for Ambient Assisted Living

Typical wearable devices use a dedicated mobile phone as relay node to transfer the collected sensor data to a server. However, such relay nodes can be faulty or inactive due to various reasons, leading to interruptions of the communication link. To mitigate this challenge, we propose a novel security-enhanced emergency situation detection system, where 3\textsuperscript{rd} party unknown mobile relays are used instead of dedicated gateways as opposed to many existing solutions for IoT healthcare applications. The proposed underlying key agreement and authentication scheme ensures anonymity and untraceability for both sensors (wearable devices) and relay nodes, and relies on symmetric key-based operations to function under resource-constrained environments. We have also developed a prototype of the system using commercial off-the-shelf devices to verify the proposed method's validity and evaluate the performance advantage over existing approaches. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication technology is used to connect sensor nodes (wearable devices) and mobile relays. After sending medical data to the cloud server, the relay node is responsible for emergency detection and alert generation.European CommissionUniversity College DublinAcademy of Finlan

Reliable and Secure Drone-assisted MillimeterWave Communications

The next generation of mobile networks and wireless communication, including the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond, will provide a high data rate as one of its fundamental requirements. Providing high data rates can be accomplished through communication over high-frequency bands such as the Millimeter-Wave(mmWave) one. However, mmWave communication experiences short-range communication, which impacts the overall network connectivity. Improving network connectivity can be accomplished through deploying Unmanned Ariel Vehicles(UAVs), commonly known as drones, which serve as aerial small-cell base stations. Moreover, drone deployment is of special interest in recovering network connectivity in the aftermath of disasters. Despite the potential advantages, drone-assisted networks can be more vulnerable to security attacks, given their limited capabilities. This security vulnerability is especially true in the aftermath of a disaster where security measures could be at their lowest. This thesis focuses on drone-assisted mmWave communication networks with their potential to provide reliable communication in terms of higher network connectivity measures, higher total network data rate, and lower end-to-end delay. Equally important, this thesis focuses on proposing and developing security measures needed for drone-assisted networks’ secure operation. More specifically, we aim to employ a swarm of drones to have more connection, reliability, and secure communication over the mmWave band. Finally, we target both the cellular 5Gnetwork and Ad hoc IEEE802.11ad/ay in typical network deployments as well as in post-disaster circumstances

Cellular, Wide-Area, and Non-Terrestrial IoT: A Survey on 5G Advances and the Road Towards 6G

The next wave of wireless technologies is proliferating in connecting things among themselves as well as to humans. In the era of the Internet of things (IoT), billions of sensors, machines, vehicles, drones, and robots will be connected, making the world around us smarter. The IoT will encompass devices that must wirelessly communicate a diverse set of data gathered from the environment for myriad new applications. The ultimate goal is to extract insights from this data and develop solutions that improve quality of life and generate new revenue. Providing large-scale, long-lasting, reliable, and near real-time connectivity is the major challenge in enabling a smart connected world. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on existing and emerging communication solutions for serving IoT applications in the context of cellular, wide-area, as well as non-terrestrial networks. Specifically, wireless technology enhancements for providing IoT access in fifth-generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks, and communication networks over the unlicensed spectrum are presented. Aligned with the main key performance indicators of 5G and beyond 5G networks, we investigate solutions and standards that enable energy efficiency, reliability, low latency, and scalability (connection density) of current and future IoT networks. The solutions include grant-free access and channel coding for short-packet communications, non-orthogonal multiple access, and on-device intelligence. Further, a vision of new paradigm shifts in communication networks in the 2030s is provided, and the integration of the associated new technologies like artificial intelligence, non-terrestrial networks, and new spectra is elaborated. Finally, future research directions toward beyond 5G IoT networks are pointed out.Comment: Submitted for review to IEEE CS&

Lightweight edge-based networking architecture for low-power IoT devices

Abstract. The involvement of low power Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) allow enhanced autonomous monitoring capability in many application areas. Recently, the principles of edge computing paradigm have been used to cater onsite processing and managing actions in WSNs. However, WSNs deployed in remote sites require human involvement in data collection process since internet accessibility is still limited to population dense areas. Nowadays, researchers propose UAVs for monitoring applications where human involvement is required frequently. In this thesis work, we introduce an edge-based architecture which create end-to-end secure communication between IoT sensors in a remote WSN and central cloud via UAV, which assist the data collection, processing and managing procedures of the remote WSN. Since power is a limited resource, we propose Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as the communication media between UAV and sensors in the WSN, where BLE is considered as an ultra-low power radio access technology. To examine the performance of the system model, we have presented a simulation analysis considering three sensor nodes array types that can realize in the practical environment. The impact of BLE data rate, impact of speed of the UAV, impact of distance between adjacent sensors and impact of data generation rate of the sensor node have been analysed to examine the performance of system. Moreover, to observe the practical functionality of the proposed architecture, prototype implementation is presented using commercially available off-the-shelf devices. The prototype of the system is implemented assuming ideal environment

Relaying in the Internet of Things (IoT): A Survey

The deployment of relays between Internet of Things (IoT) end devices and gateways can improve link quality. In cellular-based IoT, relays have the potential to reduce base station overload. The energy expended in single-hop long-range communication can be reduced if relays listen to transmissions of end devices and forward these observations to gateways. However, incorporating relays into IoT networks faces some challenges. IoT end devices are designed primarily for uplink communication of small-sized observations toward the network; hence, opportunistically using end devices as relays needs a redesign of both the medium access control (MAC) layer protocol of such end devices and possible addition of new communication interfaces. Additionally, the wake-up time of IoT end devices needs to be synchronized with that of the relays. For cellular-based IoT, the possibility of using infrastructure relays exists, and noncellular IoT networks can leverage the presence of mobile devices for relaying, for example, in remote healthcare. However, the latter presents problems of incentivizing relay participation and managing the mobility of relays. Furthermore, although relays can increase the lifetime of IoT networks, deploying relays implies the need for additional batteries to power them. This can erode the energy efficiency gain that relays offer. Therefore, designing relay-assisted IoT networks that provide acceptable trade-offs is key, and this goes beyond adding an extra transmit RF chain to a relay-enabled IoT end device. There has been increasing research interest in IoT relaying, as demonstrated in the available literature. Works that consider these issues are surveyed in this paper to provide insight into the state of the art, provide design insights for network designers and motivate future research directions

A Survey on Security and Privacy of 5G Technologies: Potential Solutions, Recent Advancements, and Future Directions

Security has become the primary concern in many telecommunications industries today as risks can have high consequences. Especially, as the core and enable technologies will be associated with 5G network, the confidential information will move at all layers in future wireless systems. Several incidents revealed that the hazard encountered by an infected wireless network, not only affects the security and privacy concerns, but also impedes the complex dynamics of the communications ecosystem. Consequently, the complexity and strength of security attacks have increased in the recent past making the detection or prevention of sabotage a global challenge. From the security and privacy perspectives, this paper presents a comprehensive detail on the core and enabling technologies, which are used to build the 5G security model; network softwarization security, PHY (Physical) layer security and 5G privacy concerns, among others. Additionally, the paper includes discussion on security monitoring and management of 5G networks. This paper also evaluates the related security measures and standards of core 5G technologies by resorting to different standardization bodies and provide a brief overview of 5G standardization security forces. Furthermore, the key projects of international significance, in line with the security concerns of 5G and beyond are also presented. Finally, a future directions and open challenges section has included to encourage future research.European CommissionNational Research Tomsk Polytechnic UniversityUpdate citation details during checkdate report - A

IoT protocols, architectures, and applications

The proliferation of embedded systems, wireless technologies, and Internet protocols have made it possible for the Internet-of-things (IoT) to bridge the gap between the physical and the virtual world and thereby enabling monitoring and control of the physical environment by data processing systems. IoT refers to the inter-networking of everyday objects that are equipped with sensing, computing, and communication capabilities. These networks can collaborate to autonomously solve a variety of tasks. Due to the very diverse set of applications and application requirements, there is no single communication technology that is able to provide cost-effective and close to optimal performance in all scenarios. In this chapter, we report on research carried out on a selected number of IoT topics: low-power wide-area networks, in particular, LoRa and narrow-band IoT (NB-IoT); IP version 6 over IEEE 802.15.4 time-slotted channel hopping (6TiSCH); vehicular antenna design, integration, and processing; security aspects for vehicular networks; energy efficiency and harvesting for IoT systems; and software-defined networking/network functions virtualization for (SDN/NFV) IoT